Another Sanctuary 7

[DesmoDog]

Newbie here. I recently got a Typhoon frame which is what led me to this site, but in the past I played around with a Sanctuary 7. I wasn't sure if it would fit in here but I see a couple other builds using one so figured I'd post up some info on mine.

The background is, I bought it instead of building up an old Typhoon frame with more modern parts. When I looked at prices I was shocked how cheaply I could get a Chinese "Schwinn" so I rolled the dice just to see how bad it could be. Got it from Amazon for right at $200 delivered (this was a few years ago)

Here's what showed up. As I recall, the bikes we unpacked in the shop back in the '80s weren't packed with as much protective stuff on them.

I figured I'd basically rebuild the whole thing while it was already sort of apart. Cracked open the headset and found this.

That was par for the course on all the bearings. The bottom bracket had a little more "grease", or is that petroleum jelly, but the black finish was everywhere and the bearings just wore it away to get a good surface. Nice. I packed it with grease but left the finish. It is what is. I had visions of replacing it with a 3 piece crank anyway.

One of my pet peeves are cable housings that are too long. This bike had that on everything too.

Long story short, EVERYTHING needed to be rebuilt/adjusted. I pressed on and got it together. I was pleasantly surprised with it actually, though the chances of the average bear getting it set up right was pretty slim. It would have sucked if assembled as is from the box, and it would have cost a ton to get a bike shop to rebuild the entire thing. Anyway, this is how it looked in stock form.

 

[DesmoDog]

Ok, I said I was pleasantly surprised, but my expectations were REALLY low. The bike had a few issues...

The brakes were super noisy. Part of it was pad alignment but I also thought the fender braces were super flimsy. I went to the Ann Arbor bike show and found some beefier braces, and some pedals, and the modding began.

Oh sure, the newb is replacing pedlas and calling it a build. yeah yeah, I get it. But one thign led to another and before I even had those parts mounted I got frustrated with the squealing brakes that no pad alignment would fix, and I went off the deep end.

I am not a fan of whatever style brakes this thing came with. Linear? I forget the term... but they always seem so spongy to me. I detest spongy brakes. There is no such thing as a too powerful brake. So I upgraded them. But I screwed up. Who knew they came in different lengths?

In the back I went with a drum brake. With an IGH 5 speed hub. I've wanted one of these for YEARS. Decades even. Oh yeah...

I spent a boatload of time trying to come up with a suitbale combination of sprockets to get away from using a tensioner, but gave up. Bought a tensioner. Didn't have enough reach to work with the Sturmey hub. Put the derailleur back on. Played around with the anti-rotation washers to get the shift cable to run along the seat stay.

You already saw the new rims in the parts picture. The originals were painted. Didn't want to deal with it. Also got stinaless spokes to put everything together. I wanted to convert the front to quick release and found out a Deore XT Hub cost about the same as parts to do that so why not? I shortend the new fender brace so it wasn't attached to the axle. Put it all togther, and decided I couldn't live with a fooking plastic derailleur. A friend had on old Suntour part so I picked that up from him.

A couple years in the handlebars were showing some rust, so I bought some alloy bars off ebay. They were a touch smaller than I'd like, but the shape was good and they'll never rust so I went with them.

 

[DesmoDog]

And this is what it looks like now.

I upgraded the brakes to a style I'm more familiar with. I know the carrier cable is too long, I'll deal with that later.

rear brake cable runs up the seat stay also.

I put the stock brakes back in place just to cover the braze ons. Cleanest cable routing ever for a rear brake! Of course it doesn't work but that's a small price to pay for not having to run an ugly cable to it!

Speaking of ugly cables... spot the shift cable! Yes there's a short one on the derailluer to hold it in positon, that's quite a reach to the chain...

The alloy bars. If only the were a couple inches wider.

Ah! Forgot about the seatpost. The seat angle adjustment is maxed out, it's JUST close enough... I'd like the nose down a touch more but it'll work.

New front brake. Yikes! I need to adjust the angle of the pad. How'd that happen?

So that's my Sanctuary 7. It was supposed to be the bike to feed my Typhoon lust, but at the end of the day it's not a Chicago built Schwinn, and that's what I wanted. A couple sentimental reasons for that.

But as luck would have, like I mentioned in the first post I stumbled across a Typhoon frame a week or two ago, so stay tuned...

 

[Wildcat]

It sounds like a good plan. There's enough parts for two bikes.

 

[MattiThundrrr]

Nice bike. The stuff you are using is good gear, should make a good rider. I'd drop a few bucks for those brakes you didn't go with up front, and another few for the straddle setup on the ones you did use there. They'd be right at home on a couple of my rides.

 

[Karate Chicken Industries]

With the semi-horizontal dropouts you would not need to use a chain tensioner by using a half-link chain.

https://www.supercrossbmx.com/blogs/news/full-link-chain-vs-half-link-chain

 

[Jude Ephesus]

Newbie here. I recently got a Typhoon frame which is what led me to this site, but in the past I played around with a Sanctuary 7. I wasn't sure if it would fit in here but I see a couple other builds using one so figured I'd post up some info on mine.

The background is, I bought it instead of building up an old Typhoon frame with more modern parts. When I looked at prices I was shocked how cheaply I could get a Chinese "Schwinn" so I rolled the dice just to see how bad it could be. Got it from Amazon for right at $200 delivered (this was a few years ago)

Here's what showed up. As I recall, the bikes we unpacked in the shop back in the '80s weren't packed with as much protective stuff on them.

I figured I'd basically rebuild the whole thing while it was already sort of apart. Cracked open the headset and found this.

That was par for the course on all the bearings. The bottom bracket had a little more "grease", or is that petroleum jelly, but the black finish was everywhere and the bearings just wore it away to get a good surface. Nice. I packed it with grease but left the finish. It is what is. I had visions of replacing it with a 3 piece crank anyway.

One of my pet peeves are cable housings that are too long. This bike had that on everything too.

Long story short, EVERYTHING needed to be rebuilt/adjusted. I pressed on and got it together. I was pleasantly surprised with it actually, though the chances of the average bear getting it set up right was pretty slim. It would have sucked if assembled as is from the box, and it would have cost a ton to get a bike shop to rebuild the entire thing. Anyway, this is how it looked in stock form.

BEAUTIFUL bike!

 

[DesmoDog]

With the semi-horizontal dropouts you would not need to use a chain tensioner by using a half-link chain.

https://www.supercrossbmx.com/blogs/news/full-link-chain-vs-half-link-chain

I'm not sure I'd call these semi-vertical dropouts?

It might be worth another look, but I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the magic combination of chain links and cog sizes. I have a spreadsheet somewhere with a bunch of combinations and I never came up with anything, even with half links.

One factor was availability of parts. There weren't a whole lot of choices for chainrings IIRC. I considered going to a 3 piece crank to help with that. I also looked into getting/making an offset adapter for the bottom bracket to adjust tension there. I like that idea the best but it got to be too involved for the benefit it gave me. I eventually just gave in to using the derailleur. Even if I did work it out, the hanger would still be there anyway.

Now I tell myself the derailleur is just one more "wtf?" detail on the bike. A brake with no cable? A derailleur with no cable? on a single cog hub? Makes people think, if they ever notice it to begin with.

I'd kinda like to find an old Campy derailleur to put on there, I should start my search for that again. A Campy front hub would have been fun too.

In other news, the Typhoon frame I got came with a 3 piece crank adapter in the bottom bracket, so I have one of those now. That opens up some possibilities for further mods. Campy crank anyone? ;-)

 

[Karate Chicken Industries]

I could not see the dropouts in previous pics well enough and most (even modern) cruisers have horizontal dropouts. Even so, a half-link may still solve your need for a tensioner.